Three Ways Word Can Drive You Crazy[er] and What You Can Do About Them

Does autoformatting make you nuts? We computer users have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft Word. Some of us see Microsoft as the Evil Empire of Computing and refuse to use its software at all. The rest of us are more realistic; we understand the benefits of using some of the world's most popular software for everyday chores. But even fans know that Word has a few features that can drive anyone absolutely bonkers. Maria Langer presents the top three ways Word can drive you crazy and tells you how to fix it to maintain your sanity while you work.

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Computer users have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft Word. Some see
Microsoft as the Evil Empire of Computing and refuse to use its software at all.
The rest of us are more realistic and understand the benefits of using some of
the world's most popular software for our everyday chores.

I fall into that second, bigger category. I use Word every dayI'm
using it right now, in factto create the documents I need to get my work
done.

But that doesn't mean I absolutely love Word. Sure, it gets the job
done, but it has far more features than the average user will ever need. And if
you've been using Word for awhile, I'm sure you'll agree that
right out of the box, it has a few features that will drive you absolutely
bonkers.

In this article, I present the top three ways Word can drive you crazy and
tell you how to fix it to maintain your sanity while you work. Although this
article refers to the current version of Wordthat's Word 2003 for
Windows and Word 2004 for Mac OSmany of these annoying features can be
found in previous versions of Word as well.

Automatic Entire Word Selection and More

Throughout the Windows and Mac OS world, there's a consistent way to
select text in a document: Drag the mouse pointer over the text. In every
program you use, the selection will include the point from which you began the
selection to the point where you stopped. This process makes it possible to
select any amount of text, including text from the middle of one word to the
middle of another, like this:

Standard, yes. But not universal. Because Word doesn't work this way, at
least not right out of the box.

Word has a feature that automatically selects entire words when you select
text in more than one word. Someone at Microsoft must really like this feature
because it's turned on (enabled) by default when you install Word. So if
you attempted to select what you see highlighted in the preceding illustration,
what will really be selected in Word is this:

While you're in this dialog box, you may want to disable a few other
annoying features.

Tabs and backspaces set left indent automatically sets the left
indentation when you press the Tab or Backspace key. Do I really want Word to
mess with my indentation settings while I type? No.

NOTE

If you're using the Windows version of Word, you'll find this
option in the AutoFormat As You Type tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box. Read on
and you'll see it.

Show Paste Options buttons displays a pop-up menu (like the one
shown next) onscreen every time you use the Paste command. (Of course, the menu
doesn't appear unless you click it; normally, just the menu button
appears.) I find this feature extremely distracting. If I wanted to change the
text formatting, I could change it a lot faster than I could use the silly
menu.

Examine the other settings in the dialog box to see which ones have the
potential to make you nutty. You can learn more about an option in Windows by
clicking the ? button in the dialog box's title bar or in Mac OS by simply
pointing to the option. When you're finished fine-tuning settings, click OK
to start your return to sanity.